The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History

by John Ortved

  A witness who was close to these events, and to both Brooks and Belson, related how, during The Simpsons’ second season, Jerry Belson heard that Brooks had received a check for $6 million, while he himself had yet to receive anything. “Heard you got a big check,” Belson joked with his friend over the telephone. “I’m looking forward to mine.” Jim’s response was reassuring, even cavalier: “Don’t worry, babe, I’m taking care of you.”

  After more than year of waiting, with the deadline to pursue legal action fast approaching, Belson had still not seen any of the money his role as a producer of Ullman entitled him to. He asked his friend, “Jim, what am I supposed to do?” The answer was the same: “Don’t worry, babe. I’m taking care of you. You’re going to get more than you’re even entitled to.” Three weeks before the deadline approached, Belson complained to Brooks that he was putting him in an awkward position, forcing him to call a lawyer.

  According to this witness, Brooks went “ballistic.”

  Belson had been diagnosed with cancer, and he and his wife, Joann, were raising a child who was severely handicapped. The last thing he wanted was to be entangled in a lawsuit. His lawyers advised him to settle. Fox was refusing to reveal how much money they were making from The Simpsons. Belson was looking at the daunting prospect of taking the Fox corporation to court and forcing the company to open up its books, a process that Fox could afford to drag on forever and was nearly impossible without Jim Brooks’s help. Brooks held much of the leverage here. The Simpsons was Brooks’s show; Fox wanted to keep him happy but had fewer reasons to care about Belson. “Do I want to face a team of lawyers who are going to hide everything anyway?” Belson asked. “If you don’t have the support of Gracie Films, if Jim isn’t going to stand behind his producers—you can’t find someone who’s going to jeopardize his job to go on the stand.”

  Belson, who has been described as unfailingly honest (“beloved” was the word most often employed), was devastated that his best friend and partner would betray him this way, all the while claiming that it was not his doing; it was Fox’s. Other sources say that it was very much Jim and Gracie who were challenging the Ullman producers’ claims. “Because that’s who Jim is,” the witness says. “He’ll tell you whatever you want to hear, but it’s not the truth. He’s a businessman. There’s never enough for Jim. It’s a sickness.” When all was said and done, Belson settled, taking approximately $100,000 for his percentage of The Simpsons that would be worth millions. A source from the Gracie side of things would not comment on whether Jim’s behavior qualified as betrayal or not, saying only that Belson’s claim was baseless.

  Beslon and Brooks never spoke again. When a mutual friend tried to reunite them years later, Belson declined, asking how he could possibly be friends with someone who would stab his best friend in the back “for a few lousy bucks.” Belson died of cancer in 2006. Brooks was deeply affected by Belson’s death. Even though they had not spoken in nearly fifteen years, Brooks began to work the phone, speaking to many of their old friends, helping to organize a memorial for Jerry that would take place at Garry Marshall’s theater. Although some of the friends they’d shared were surprised at Brooks’s participation, it was a sensitive time, and after all Jim Brooks was Jim Brooks, one of Hollywood’s biggest machers; it was hard to say no. In addition, Brooks’s involvement was seen as an expression of regret for what he’d done to his friend, especially when Brooks announced that at the memorial he would be speaking last. When his turn came, the expectation was that Brooks would finally own up to what he’d done, and as one attendee put it, “Be a mensch, take responsibility for what he did.” To the shock of many, Brooks talked only about his and Belson’s amazing relationship, painting a “convoluted” and “crazy” portrait of their crumbled friendship.i

  To the even greater dismay of their friends, after the funeral Brooks came to the Belson house, where Joann was having a party for Jerry’s “real” friends. One well-known actor who had known both men was overheard asking, “Doesn’t he [Brooks] realize everyone here hates him?”

  Belson and Brooks’s former producing partners would not be the only casualties of the show’s success. There was also Klasky-Csupo, the studio that had given the show its signature look. In January 1992, it was announced that The Simpsons had dropped Klasky-Csupo for Fim Roman.

  SHERRY GUNTHER, animation producer, The Simpsons (1990–92): Part of the frustrations on the Gracie Films side was that they were used to working in live action and they were used to rewriting their show the night before air and reshooting those scenes. And with animation, there’s six months’ lead time between writing and air, so trying to allow them the ability to affect it and to make it funnier at any given point and to redo it is quite challenging.

  BRIAN ROBERTS, editor, The Simpsons (1989–92): Whenever we’d get the animation back, the sitcom part of the writers would come out. They’d wanna rewrite all the dialogue.

  CHARLIE GOLDSTEIN, former executive vice president in charge of production, Fox Television: We were dealing with people like Brooks and Sakai, and everyone else who was used to having actors on stage and changing dialogue. Brooks was a multicamera guy, a comedy guy, of course. We produced The Simpsons shows like live shows. We actually used the animation process as rehearsals. We spent a lot of money on the first episode, because we actually did those kind of changes—but of course we were redrawing it each time and we were reanimating it, so it cost a fortune. We did that for the first episode and it cost double what we thought it was going to cost. More than double.

  SHERRY GUNTHER: From day one they wanted a much bigger product than they were willing to pay for, and yet they didn’t understand the process. They didn’t understand the medium and the time involved. And, you know, they’re the big guys. They’re not used to being told no. But I kept thinking, Oh, my God, I can’t animate this show overnight.

  It was very challenging to try to keep everybody happy, ’cause you had a lot of young artists with no work ethic and who were feeling overworked and overwhelmed. And, on the other side you had Gracie Films going, “What do you mean, you can’t do it? I want it redone frickin’ tomorrow.” And then you have Fox going, “What do you mean, it’s gonna cost more?” The only reason I think Klasky got the job was that they were a complete unknown, because they bid at a small fraction of the price everyone else did.

  In 1990, I came in and restructured and we had this big meeting at Fox, and they said, “This is the budget,” and it was still minute. Minute. It was a fraction of what it is today. Salaries, quite frankly, haven’t changed that much, and Fox said, “What?”

  CHARLIE GOLDSTEIN: I can’t remember exactly what the first episode was gonna cost. We probably spent three or four hundred thousand, which was humongous.

  To address the network’s financial concerns, a meeting was held at Fox, attended by Jim Brooks, Richard Sakai, John Dolgen, Harris Katleman, and several other Fox executives. The meeting, described by one of the execs as “difficult,” turned into a screaming match and devolved into a he said/she said argument over the spiraling costs. Fox blamed Gracie Films, which in turn blamed Klasky-Csupo.

  SHERRY GUNTHER: What happened was, in the very first season, we just ate it big-time and, you know, screamed for mercy. The second season we worked a lot of the problems into the schedule and the budget. And that’s really when I was able to walk Fox through it and do a budget that was realistic.

  But even with that, there were still tons of times when Gracie would say, “We wanna rewrite this whole script, or 80 percent of this script, after layouts.” And so it was constantly a struggle. In the second season, I asked if we could just have revisions built in. We knew they were a fact of life. We’d been doing them. They are what make the show great. Why can’t we just accept that they are part of the show? But Fox said, “No, no, no, no. That’s ridiculous. Every time you get a change, you call us.”

  From Gracie’s side, the problems had less to do with the overages than the personal
ities at Klasky-Csupo. “They were all nuts. They were all crazy,” a former Gracie employee says. “They were great. They were young, hip, you know, wonderful artists. But, honestly, it was a madhouse.”

  SHERRY GUNTHER: We’d have these wonderful creative meetings with Gracie where they’d tell us what they wanted to do. Then I’d sit down with my director and he’d tell me what was involved. And then I’d have to call Fox and tell them how much it would cost. They’d call and scream at Gracie, and then Gracie would call and scream at me. It was really just not a great setup.

  The situation was no single entity’s fault. Fox’s lack of experience in animation led to budgets that were unrealistic in the first place, while Brooks’s staff’s insistence on rewrites—after animation had already been completed—led to unforeseen overages, further exasperating those budgets. Klasky-Csupo, for its part, was described as “romper room,” and the company seemed to be poorly managed, when you consider the fact that they never had a contract with Gracie. There was also, needless to say, an ego factor. Jim Brooks, Barry Diller, and the other Fox execs are not used to hearing the word “no” or not getting what they want. Add the strong-willed and “crazy” Gabor Csupo to the mix, and there were bound to be clashes down the line.

  GABOR CSUPO, animation executive producer (1989–92): After [the first episode debacle], I think the whole relationship just kind of went downhill. Jim never really made any efforts to be friendly to us and treated us like second-class citizens. After three years of suffering, it came to a point where they made so many changes to the show that we as the animation company obviously couldn’t swallow all the overages. My producers kept sending invoices back to 20th Century Fox saying that all these overages came from the fact that Gracie Films was rewriting the script last minute and then forcing us to reanimate. When they found this out they told me, “You have to fire your producers or we take the show away from you.” And I said, “I cannot fire my producer because she’s doing her job.” So they told me they were taking the show away, and I said, “Be my guest.” Because by that time, we’d been working around the clock for years without ever hearing a nice word from those guys. We felt completely abused.

  SHERRY GUNTHER: The ironic thing in my eyes has always been that by the third season we had it down to a science and an art. That was honestly and objectively the best season of The Simpsons. They were the prettiest-looking shows. At the beginning of the third season, I was able to convince Fox to let us work at least the bulk of the changes into the budget. We were able to accommodate and do what was necessary, and it really was pretty friction-free. But by then, Gracie was intent on taking the show away. It became a vengeance thing.

  CHARLIE GOLDSTEIN: I didn’t want to leave Klasky-Csupo—they were doing great. I don’t think they did a bad job; I think we did a bad job of managing the show. We. Me. Fox. The producers. Everybody. We let the show get out of hand. But it gets to a point where a show is doing so well on the air, way beyond expectations, and they just saw how much money they were gonna make in syndication and in merchandising that it didn’t matter what it cost anymore.

  SHERRY GUNTHER: It was not pretty. We had all put our lives into this thing, and it was definitely hard to take. It was our baby as much as anybody’s in that sense, and it was particularly insulting because they ended up taking most of the crew with them.

  Goldstein had hired an animation producer of his own, named Richard Raynis, whose job it was to make things run smoothly and keep the costs down. As far as the animation firm was concerned, his main job was in fact to analyze exactly what was being done at Klasky-Csupo, so they could easily move the show over.

  Gracie’s side of the situation was that Klasky-Csupo’s real problem was Gunther. Gracie saw her as “dishonest” and “utterly unreliable.” The impression was that she was taking advantage of both Fox and Gracie, double-talking both parties and “gaming” them for money. Not only that, but her manner was regarded as high-handed, despite the fact that Klasky-Csupo was ultimately working for Gracie. Gunther, who was surprised to hear this was how Gracie saw things, noted that Fox never had any problems with the way she did her job, or with her personally, nor did Fox ever accuse her of “gaming” them [and she’s right—they didn’t]. She was a twenty-three-year-old kid, doing her best, but ultimately was just communicating Gabor Csupo’s directives to Gracie, who were being uncooperative and demanding. Gracie demanded that Gunther be removed from managing The Simpsons’ animation, but Gabor Csupo blatantly refused—despite the fact that keeping The Simpsons contract would have made him millions. (Gabor could easily have reassigned Gunther.) Gracie dumped them and took their business and most of Klasky-Csupo’s staff to Film Roman, run by the genial and reasonable Phil Roman.

  PHIL ROMAN, former owner of Film Roman: They explained to me that they were having problems with Klasky-Csupo, that they had some gal working on the project with whom they had communication problems. They told Gabor that he should replace her. He said, “You’re not going to tell me how to run my studio.”

  So I went back to the studio and I called Gabor. And I asked, “Is this true?” And he said, “Yep. They’ve already told me they’re going to be taking the show away from me.” And I said, “Well, they offered it to me. I don’t want it to appear like I’m working behind your back.” And he said, “If they’re going to give it to anyone I’m glad it’s going to be you.”

  The great thing about that project was that all the crew from Gabor Csupo came along with them; the directors, I believe, were all under contract to Fox directly. So I didn’t have to start from scratch, because the people that were already on the project came along with it.

  SHERRY GUNTHER: It was kinda nasty. A few months before they told us they were gonna move, they said, “Let’s get the directors under contract, but we want the contract to be with Fox.”

  And we said, “Okay. We think it’s a great idea. We wanna keep these guys on the show ’cause they’re key to doing it.”

  They put them on a contract with Fox so when they went to move, they had every right to take them. It was not really aboveboard—they basically took the entire crew and sat them down in a different studio. People would call me and say, you know, “The new producer over there is just literally walking around, going, ‘What do you do? Okay, keep doing it. What do you do? All right, keep doing it.’”

  GABOR CSUPO: Sam [Simon] was actually gracious. And Matt Groening, too. I can’t say that they never praised any of the animators or anything. But what was coming from the top was what’s important to us, from Jim Brooks and Richard Sakai. They were just truly ungrateful about all our hard work. We really felt that they never saw our hard work and they never really appreciated what we went through.

  They just took two hundred of my people. The whole crew. It was a big, big crew, and basically they just walked over to Film Roman, because they knew the characters and all that. So that was a big loss, but at same time a blessing for us, because that’s when Nickelodeon came by and we created six big shows for them.

  DON BARROZO: It was kind of like being sent to a foster home. It was like you were uprooted from where you had grown up and sent somewhere else. And you had to get used to it. So it always felt like you were the adopted kid. Film Roman already had all these properties that were theirs, and The Simpsons, as successful as we were, was kind of treated like the stepchild. It was weird. But we were lucky to have a place to go.

  SHERRY GUNTHER: It was disappointing and personal. It was embarrassing. It was everything that you’d assume it would be. But luckily, Klasky-Csupo still had the Rugrats, which was going strong, and we were in the process of selling Duckman at the time, and that went forward and became a successful show. And so we recovered from it, and it was certainly a relief to get rid of the negativity that went around, but it was definitely disappointing. We didn’t wanna lose it.

  DON BARROZO, animation editor, The Simpsons (1987–present): The whole vibe of the place was different. It felt very corporate
. Klasky-Csupo was a small, almost family-run place. It had a real looseness to it. The intercom was going constantly with jokes. Film Roman was basically this single floor with cubicles, gray everything, and nothing on the walls. It was as if everybody had just been put in prison. It felt like, Oh, my God. Are we supposed to try and keep doing the show in a place like this?

  Either because the production process was now so clearly defined, or because Roman’s outfit was simply so much easier to deal with, the problems seemed to disappear. When Valerie Cavanaugh, one of the people at Gracie doing the search for a new animation house, called to interview Roman as a potential replacement, Roman was out of town, vacationing in his hometown, Fresno. A source says this strongly inclined Cavanaugh to go with Roman: apparently, after all the craziness and ego clashes with Klasky-Csupo, Kavanaugh liked the idea of someone who took vacations in Fresno. Roman, who could not be a nicer, more easygoing fellow, seemed to her to be the perfect antidote to Klasky-Csupo.

  PHIL ROMAN: Gabor had told me they were so difficult to get along with, that they were demanding, and this and that—and I didn’t find them like that at all. Anything they wanted was reasonable and those things that were unreasonable they paid for, so there was no real problem. It was a very pleasant situation. And then they did another series, King of the Hill, and we got that one too. We had a tremendous relationship with Fox: we met all their requirements, we didn’t miss any deadlines, even when they had the Northridge earthquake in the middle of production. We turned around and moved to another place and set up different units in different places and we didn’t miss any deadlines.